test after live

I'm seriously thinking of ditching all the virtual digital gear and going straight analog. I want an 8 track and 2 track reel to reel machine a Moog an Arp and a Buchla. modular setup. I'd also like to get my Vox organs fixed.

this is Realistic Concertmate MG-1 by Moog Music, distributed via Radio Shack in 1982. it was dismissed as a cheap toy. but the insides are all Moog. I played it a few years, but never went too deep into it. live, it was a disaster. it will not stay in tune. I got pretty good at reaching up for the pot to dial it back in but using both oscillators created a monster of out of tunage I couldn't master. so I'd end up pulling down the 2nd oscillator and playing off one. or sometimes just ditching the oscillators and playing the cheesy organ sound this synth has (only Moog that has an organ sound, and yes it routes right through the 24db ladder filter and ADSR which is really only rise and fall) --

by 1986 I was in a horrible bar band playing a truly cheesy Yamaha DX 27 the base model DX -- I had my little Moog for effects off to the side. the leader of the band took duct tape and covered up the Realistic label because it embarrassed him. here in Bakersfield we call duct tape "oildale chrome" in honor of our white ghetto to the north of town where tin foil is the preferred window treatment and people park on the lawns with their hoods up adjusting carburetors, and they mow their lawns in the middle of the night, and they ride bicycles with flash lights taped to the handlebars, etc. etc. etc.

anyway, these guys also hated Peavey but didn't throw the oildale chrome on my peavey enclosure I used for a monitor, at least.

I delved off into chemicals to escape the horror of the late 80s -- synthesizers became like violin backgrounds as their promise of the 60s and 70s faded entirely into digital sameness and bland FM MOR crud. the freakin hair metal bands ruled oh the humanity. Devo and Kraftwerk disappeared. I disappeared with them. I have no idea how many times I took little Moog into the pawn shops to finance my devolving habits only to be turned down for cash for the little guy :0 good thing it turns out. did hock the DX27 never to be seen again, plus a pretty decent PA head which I still miss.

Realistic Moog has sat in storage all over town, in connects house 20 years ago pre-sobriety, in garage, in suitcase (which got tooken back by disgusted relative), and more recently in the closet here in this house the past 9 years. now it sits proudly here beside me, putting to pale the Roland and Alesis and a the phalanx of softsynths AUs VSTs plugins emulators arpeggiators samplers and all around complicated digital crud surrounding me this past decade.

listen to some real analog -- done on logic so there's some clipping sorry, reel to reels will fix this. to me this reflects a small bit of the promise the 60s and 70s held for analog subtractive synthesis and one can see why guitar players got genuinely scared at the new monster on the horizon, and even eventually adapted the guitar synthesizer by the late 70s.

you cannot get this sort of color, timbre, depth, -- heck, EMOTION out of digital music. I thank God I still have little Realistic Moog, He has been very good to me, providing for me and watching out for me when I had no idea what I was doing -- and as I thank Him today for helping me stop smoking, along with my MJ buddies pulling for me here, I feel He is giving me a new direction and a new lease on life.

this song brings tears to my eyes throw on some cans crank 'em to 11 shut out the spouse and kids and cares and worries and take a little trip with your ol' buddy dimm, knowing we're safe in the arms of Robert Moog and our God as we plumb the heights and depths of dual oscillators and the patented 24dB ladder filter and every REAL knob gets twiddled and every REAL switch gets switched and every REAL pot gets turned,,, cry with me.

soundtrack
for the decline and fall of analog. come on we're bringin it back who's with me WHO'S WITH ME~! lol. tilting at virtual windmills here -- I agree as long as it's fun who cares~! just... a ... little... misty, is all. got sompin in me eye.

24db
some crazy waves in this, thats some description, for a kids toy it sounds awesome, where can I get me one! Hey BTW I quite cold turkey 15 years ago if I can do it anyone can. You just need to smoke something a bit more interesting. Just kidding!

lol
I done my bale you know dat!! for reals. daze long gins but not forgotten. nicotine ain't a bad drug the delivery system is carcinogenic!! best to kick for all concerned. there is usually an MG-1 or two on eBay at any given time nowadays -- fixer uppers are going for $300-400 while working refurbs around $600 plus. cheapest Moog even today. the slim phatty is real nice at under $1000 but less switches and knobs etc don't the he on the fly tweak capabilities of these old babies. I'd still love one of course but who has a thousand bucks!! love ya Timmy

those were the days :-)
I still have my old monophonic roland SH101 :-)
I have good memories of tapedecks and 4 track cassettedecks :-) there's certainly more warmth in analog.
made me think of early pinkfloyd :-)
KC

for years
I'd whine I only had one synth (Roland jp8000) with moog sitting right in the closet there. amazing how perspective can be lost. I feel I'm coming to my senses :-) I am the analog prodigal lol

I had a psych revival band in 1985 we did 6 songs in a little studio. the songs are ok the performances rough BUT the recordings themselves in spite of the limitations are wonderfully warm and rich and full of lively depth -- with headphones I feel I'm back in the room. nuances come through via the full analog signal with every sine of wavelength full filled out in my ears!

hey well break out that bad baby and jammit kc I'll be eagerly awaiting ;-)

yeh mixerman
VicDiesel had the link in his sig I did buy the book and read it in a couple of evenings it's can't -put-down material

and I think it's plain to see a generation since 10 years ago that era has been starved by a paucity of signal catching spotty packets of waves -- you know it's like looking at a brochure of a car in a showroom tinking it's the real deal versus really going out and driving the car. digital is just snapshots of analog

I used to say no one can tell the difference I'm not saying that anymore. for commercials and radio psas etc who cares I made those on a daw BUT our culture is rapidly losing a great treasure of richness we just had a few short decades ago and we are diminished for it -- perhaps even on deeper levels than we know, or even CAN know.

moog documentary?
no! I need to find it. I've been doing a lot of reading and ordering some books too -- I got Strange Sounds and read it right through -- you know putting a weird sound in your song can really get it noticed and that's been a staple going way back. good vibrations one example.

i just ordered another one about the moog arp and buchla pioneers -- moog is back in a big way right now the old ones are expensive and the new ones ain't cheap! and they aren't cheap to have fixed either. arp went bankrupt early 80s but just noticed buchla has vids on YouTube for new units you play with wands rather than keyboard interface. buchla never wanted keyboard interface weird huh! never went after money or prestige either a real hippie ;-)

a little korg monophone with ribbon control can be had for 60 bucks. mods should be coming online by now for key interface somehow they don't come with midi

if I had a thousand bucks I'd get a slim phatty. but in some ways my 30 year old mg-1 is superior. I really need to appreciate what I have. :-) and I am regaining that appreciation with my friends here helping me along

...
I want a Moog Prodigy, strictly on the basis of what I heard on this video...

http://youtu.be/OhpT6skYKS4

Anyways, that video is called 'Moog' and it's up for instant play on Netflix if you got that, totally worth it, I love mad geniuses. Also they got a bunch of Moogfest stuff on Netflix too, not as good as the documentary, but worth watching when you got time to kill.

Funny you mentioned the thing about tuning the synth. My gramma was reminiscing about how all the grandkids would come and play her old casio back in the day. She said she wished she had one so she could jam on it when watching her music DVD's, since she can't fit her piano in her 'old folks' apartment. So, I bought her an old casio and I had to 'tune' it. I had never heard of that before, I thought it was such a weird thing to have to tune a synth, but maybe not? Is it that way on all synths?

the mg-1
has 2 tune pots instantly accessible at the top left. keep playing lead right hand whilst tuning on the fly. the way every analog board should be if it tends to get outa tune!! kind of like reaching for a guitar tuning screw ;-)

digital synths don't need tuning once set I have to go in a menu and dial up parameters and change from default a 440 or whatever. guitarists insist their little tuners are accurate so I submit and tune to them. lol

the little consumer boards often do have a little place to insert like a screwdriver or something and tune like a half step either way ;-) my old vox organs out in the garage each individual transistor board has to be individually tuned -- and there's a row of them. could be worse -- look at piano tuning screws wotta nightmare.

digital is superior for tuning they had to include a detune parameter to simulate the fat analog sound of conflicting oscillators. hey to their credit they are getting better and better at simulation -- but with pieces of the puzzle
missing it will still be that to me -- simulated. I'm just at a point in my life where REAL matters ring now is all ;-)

we got Netflix on wii now lol yes I will watch thanks for the heads up!!

chantix
is putting little corks in the receptor holes. it's working good this time. did it a few years ago and got the suicidal ideation. this time, off on disability, that isn't happening. I'll ne'er forget laying in my sleeper of my work truck at 3 am, getting ready to roll out to a 4:30 am job (gonna be a 14 hour shift) and just wanting to DIE!!! I am not trapped here like at work. so the timing is perfect.

the chantix is weird the feeling is, I just HAD a cigarette it feels like. been like that 2 weeks but I smoked on top of it the first week. that did not feel good. if there is nausea I attribute it to just having had a deep smoke lol.

my mom had to take vocodin a couple years ago she's in her 70s -- she said I don't like it it makes me feel sick and dizzy. I told her that's what feelig GOOD feels like!! I always shot right past sick and dizzy to FUN lol

I'm gonna stretch it and say it's tougher than quitting heroin crack hookers and texting at the SAME TIME.

did you know
the sons of the little dentists suction thing in your mouth is the most instantly recognizable sound in the world?? everyone can identify it and distinctly describe it in less than 1.4 seconds. well as I recall something like that lol

hmm have to find a sample of that and throw it in a mix soon

headphones o yeh what it's all about with aural landscapes ! I like how some songs even go up and down and in and out as well as side to side. ;-) thanks bro

I'm gonna keep on
wringing every bit of life I can out this little unit i am very fortunate it still plays at all. it has a few issues. but sometimes the flaws are what makes us beautiful -- or maybe they make the beauty of what remains stand out better ? ya know? ah I'm coo coo -- thanks for stopping by ;-)

yes
as opposed to let me dive into this tiny LCD screen (which I can't see) and reassign variables and change values and designate parameters -- oh I'd much rather just reach up and twiddle a knob!!!!!

analog is in-discrete
no step-functions to trip over, analog is pure silky slippery smooth bliss. i cry with you for the slicing of analog into bits. i grew up with a soldering iron in my hand, building one-shot oscillator circuits, driven by MOSFETs (that could detect how close your hand was to them for theremin effects), and I recorded some of the experiments on a Sony 4-track reel-to-reel (now long gone.) this music revives those memories, and gets my blood pumping as hot as molten solder in my veins. long live analog. digital, by definition, can only approximate the love. 0x0
-Drakonis/ic42

Thanks Eddie
Listening to the piece I get your point completely- this sort of analogue music is the true "electronic" music in a sense- very enjoyable. Computer sound fonts are more of a "fake-up" for "instruments" even if the instrument in question is a fantasy sound.
Cheers
Mark

Well Not Me.....
Analog is almost gone and I'm glad, saturated sounds it's like trying
to edit silk.....
The cost of tape and the machines have gone through the roof, no
it's dying and I'll be the first to throw dirt over it...Anyone got a
shovel or a pick axe..... Just to many long lonely nights in the studio
trying nothing sound like something......
The Delete button is my friend now and for the rest of my days......
There will be no tears from me to see it go.....

Moog on!!
What a great story. Great visuals when painting the Bakersfield images.
There is something real warm about analogue. Listening to this was a 5 minute time capsule. It felt good to kick back and trip to this. Moog on man!!
SG

boy o boy
buchlas are EXPENSIVE. I would have to form some sort of education foundation and apply for a grant to afford one of those setups. arps in various states of repair are floating around -- that might be a maybe. I can be very grateful I at least have moog tech in my home and start utilizing it more.

well this was definitely moogy
sounds like you were having fun. I wish I had been high while listening to it. :) Eventually I started to hear the various themes running thru it, you're really a wild man, I feel freaked out properly.

thanks ft
I gotta make some more music. maybe I'll develop this out properly but probably not. I'm incredibly lazy. which is why I like analog -- no diving into menus and changing a bunch of complicated settings. just reach up and twist a knob. don't even have to think about it :-)